What's the biggest jump in difficulty you've seen in a retro game?Pic related for me. The last level was just absurd compared to the rest of the game.
This guy.>>12887996My brother never got past that part.
Difficulty spikes in the middle of a game are good design. If you look at SMB3 the entire game is designed around that idea, with castles and airships being the spikes which are generally followed by easy stages. The player gets better and giving him easy stuff afterwards empowers him even more. Modern design thinks difficulty should be a linear flat slighlty uphill line which is boring
FE3 final dungeon(s) got me thinking how ludicruous it would be to ask someone to do this on actual hardware with no prior knowledge and not suffer a wipe that likely eliminated hours of progress>Can only save in the overworld>Final dungeon is 3 separate huge dungeons (potentially 4 assuming you grab the last jobs which you in all likelyhood will) full of enemies with some of the hardest enemies in the game and with instant kill abilities>If you gun it for the final boss in the world of darkness you straight up lose - Its invincible and you cant run. You need to know to go and fight the other bosses in TWoD before you can actually kill the final boss (Without the game telling you this ofc, so in all likelihood you face at least one loss from just this)>While we are on it, one of the other bosses in TWoD straight up just kills a single party member each turn and thats all he does which can easily suprise you if you aren't ready>So eventually you trudge back after potentially 2 defeats and a shitton of backtracking through the longass dungeons only to fight the final boss when you realize that while you can now injure it, it still does assloads of damage and the only way you genuinely can defeat it is a pure numbers race>You suffer a wipe, weep, and repeat, but this time grind like a motherfucker just to have an HP pool to survive the onslaughtI enjoy a dungeon that actually feels like a properly scary challening place but holy shit FF3s final gauntlet does not fuck around
>>12887996the ristar final boss. the entire game is a cakewalk and then you get hit by a brick wall. i loved it. it was the only part of the game that required practice for the no-continue run
>>12888082>This guy.Really? He's easily abusable. Knock him down with a special or something, then walk away from him, he'll jump or slide towards you, so you do a jumping attack and repeat the process.
>>12887996>The final levelThat game is hard all-around xcept for the first level
>>12887996From MM7>According to Yoshihisa Tsuda, it turned out as tough as it did because Keiji Inafune said, "Let's make the very last fight insanely hard!".The whole game is piss easy, then you get here and unless you have a ton of energy tanks you're in for a bad time
Devil may cry 3's Cerebus is pretty infamous. For me he was the second hardest boss in the game and you face when you are still learning what the buttons do.He's way this relatively tame game has an undeserved reputation for difficulty.
>>12888131Could be worse, too. The DS remake gives all bosses at least two attacks per turn and they go off at random. The final boss gets FOUR, and if you're very unlucky, she can chain party-nukes one after another and you'll be doomed to die.
>>12888131You know, I often think to myself that I couldn't have used save states and probably hadn't figured out how to use them yet when I emulated this game circa 2002 because I distinctly have memories of making the climb up the Crystal Tower several times, and indeed dying to at least the Two-Headed dragon and certainly the CoD, but at the same time I wonder if I'm not gaslighting myself, because this really is a brutal gauntlet, and I don't know if I would've had the patience after a while.
>Rayman 1. Has a fun child-like setting and a breezy saunter through the first stage and then it's just bullshit on top of bullshit.>Ys 1Kind of hard at the beginning when you're too frail to defeat the basic enemies, but being able to save anytime and anywhere, you can cheese your way to a high enough level to get through without trouble. Then you get to ... any of the bosses and they are shockingly the hardest thing on the NES by far. Nothing comes close to how bullshit they are. >Baldur's Gate: Dark AllianceYou go to a crypt full of zombies and have to fight some crystal ball and it's a big step up in difficulty.>God of War The cerberus breeder. Fuck this.>Mario Land 2Nice and easy game until Wario's castle at the end. No checkpoints, some tricky jumps, then a 4(?) phase final boss. I always like these threads.
>>12888546So far I've only bothered to try beating her once, failed and moved on. It sends you way too far back. I think I did farm for levels at Bahamut cave afterwards for couple of hours but never tried the final dungeon again.
>>12888615I too like this but I kinda wish there was a website database for this. I kinda imagine it as each game page having a timeline and it goes from green to orange to red. How cool would that be?
Ecco the Dolphin has a few. The Machine is kind of obvious, but also less of a difficulty spike than just a bunch of memorizing. The fight against the Asterite is quite hard no matter what because it's so tight. This jump though in City of Forever is very tricky. So much so that they put a hidden passage in the level to bypass it for those who got so stuck they just went poking everywhere thinking it's impossible.
I remember this boss fucking me up as a kid. Partially because I didn't realize that you can destroy the wrecking ball.
>>12888615I love Wario's Castle but it does illustrate the problem with this kinda thing, since the rest of the game doesn't have that kind of fun
The first Ultros fight in FF6 qualifies, I think. He hits relatively hard, but what makes it tough (for newcomers anyway) is the fact that you have to babysit Banon, a weak shitter with little HP and defense unless you grind a bunch, and if you're not careful he can easily die to his Tentacle attacks, and then it's game over. Not saying he's actually difficult, but he's the first fight where you actually have to play a bit more methodically, make sure you keep your HP up, and not just spam Attack like a baboon, which has filtered some noobs in the past.
>>12888514I learnt to do this fight without Tanks. I actually liked it a lot, the design is very smart.
For me is the change in armor and attack mechanics in Warcraft 3 from Reign of Chaos to The Frozen Throne, mostly because of how easy the base game is with damage calculations.Everything melts under piercing attacks, so you could make murder zones with towers and kiting enemies through them. Then TFT gets a major overhaul by introducing new damage types, buffing Fortified armor and more, making you more resourceful when defending your base and favoring going out and attacking over turtling.
>>12888120It also makes you keep your guard up or down in weird times, which can make for nice unique gameplay experiences sometimes.>>12888667>I learnt to do this fight without TanksMe too, on original hardware, but I never liked it. It's just something I suffer through in an otherwise relaxing game. Something about it feels cheaper than even the more bullshity parts of 8 like the snowboard parts.
>>12888615>GoW2This crazy old chap on titan difficulty.
>>12887996Castlevania (NES) and stage 12, with the Frankenstein boss fight, and the bone/skeleton dragon enemies before it, but especially the hunchback that hops around and shoots you during the boss... it's a pain. If you get around that, there's the corridor before the Death boss, on stage 15, and it's an absolutely miserable time... It's stil a fantastic title though.
>>12887996not an original pick but ninja gaiden. the difficulty before 5-2 is surprisingly mild, I wouldn't call it easy but definitely more smooth in difficulty than many less infamous games. every screen past that is tuned for maximum pain.
>>12888715TFT is crazy hard if you don’t respect the featured unit of each mission. For example, the attack to interrupt Illidan’s ritual at Dalaran is doable if you use the newly introduced faerie dragons and very tough without them. UD4 is a bar fight if you don’t use ships and trivial with them. BE5 (where you meet the Draenei) is stupidly easy if you abuse couatl. I think three examples is enough.
Feeling gaaa~aaaayhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B64f48ewdo
Rayman has at least 3 of them all on its own.'How can you have 3? That's just a difficulty curve!'No. Each one hits you like a wall compared to what the game was asking of you a moment ago.It's an absolute cunt of game.
>>12887996I wouldn't say "biggest", but Act II in Diablo 2 has a handful of gameplay checks for players that only rush in aimlessly.The beetle/scarabs make you consider elemental defense% and auras more, there's a lot of cramped spaces in their dens that make you evaluate the situation better regarding spells, getting swarmed and minding your positioning, the Horadric Cube opens the doors to tinkering with your inventory. I think there are more things to consider but that's a good difficulty spike in a game.
>>12888615Beat me to SML2.>BattletoadsTurbo Tunnel is that much harder than the first two levels, and even harder than a couple of levels that come afterwards. Clear rental filter.>Double DragonThe woods level is such a fucking difficulty jump compared to the previous levels. On the same level, you suddenly get shoved into a looping maze, NEED to understand you can actually enter the caves despite not being allowed to enter any doorway prior to this, and NEED to be able to do perfect jumps to avoid falling in pits and to get across some moving platforms. The next two levels are also full of bullshit, but the BS starts at the woods.>Battle of OlympusCrete. Prior to Crete, the game is more or less fair, and you can avoid the majority of damage once you git gud with the range of your club/sword. Then you get to Crete and the entire area is full of soldier enemies that take multiple hits to go down, attack at range, AND are on both the ceiling and floor so you can't just travel on the ceiling with Hermie's Sandals. Oh, and the entire area is one giant maze that doesn't follow the rules of physics.>Power D.O.L.L.S.The 3rd or 4th mission, where you send in 4 people to rescue someone. The game isn't exactly easy prior to this, but this mission is brutally hard and that much harder than every other mission in the entire game except the final mission, which is a difficulty jump all it's own.>Kirby's AdventureThe Meta-Knight battle. At worst, you have the mini-boss rush tower prior to Meta-Knight, but it's just testing your ability to beat the mini-bosses you've been fighting all game long, and you can use any ability you want. Meta-Knight on the other hand, it's just a straight 1vs1 and you are using the sword no matter what.
>>12888615>Ys 1>any of the bosses and they are shockingly the hardest thing on the NES by far. Nothing comes close to how bullshit they are.Not even close
>>12887996The final phase of Sigma in Mega Man X4.
It just occured to me that there's gonna come a time like maybe a decade from now when Dark Souls will be classified as a retro game. And whenever someone makes a thread like this a decade from now, it's gonna be filled with zoomers whose first action games were Dark Souls games.
>>12888131I was pretty satisfied with FFIII's final dungeon as well. Ancient Labyrinth was a great warmup with it being challenging but short enough you could eventually blow through the gatekeeper boss and get to the base of the Slyx Tower. That was your final save point in the game, but going back to the airship to rest and get MP back meant making another trip through the lab, and then returning through it again.I tackled it in stages, first exploring and mapping a large amount of Slyx, backing out and saving, then diving Eureka and getting the secret jobs, saving again, and then probing Xande and the final boss. Because you can save before Xande (Although you have to climb the tower again), it's not so terrible to figure out the final dungeon, but it will likely take a few runs.A lot of old RPGs you have to get in the mindset of approaching it like an expedition, where you spend at least a few attempts with a pencil and paper drawing maps. Once you can document the layout of a dungeon you can figure out how to optimize your travel through it.
>>12888538I felt like that too on DMC3's release. Got to cerb, got my ass handed to me a dozen times or so, thought the rest of the game was going to be a ball buster and was pleasantly happy considering DMC2 was something I blew through in the first day I got it. Once you got new weapons and abilities under your belt though, things got relatively easier.
This piece of shit filtered me for weeks.
>>12890569It's also gonna be filled with a ton of even younger people who never even heard of Dark Souls and don't even know why the genre is called soulslike, just like roguelike fans often get surprised when they hear there's a game called rogue
>>12888131I don't know why FF3 gets this reputation when FF2 does the same multiple dungeons marathon and the dungeons are arguably harder. I guess Dark Cloud hits like a truck more than the Emperor.
>>12892930Teleport spell in FF2 is so broken that it made the final dungeons easier. At least for me.
>>12888615>Ys 1For me it's the last boss being harder in the remake because he destroys the ground every time you hit him so if you don't hit him in the right areas you get trapped and can't do enough damage to beat him or you fall through the floor.
>>12887996I thought this thread was about literal jumps so the first thing that sprang to mind was Castlevania Chronicles, there's a jump near the end that's tighter than anything else in the game
>>12888664they did it for padding, and to justify the crazy number of lives you could get. plus if you game over there you have to go redo the other six boss fights.
>>12889953yeah, the death hallway and boss was harder than the final boss. I can pretty much clear the game deathless until frsnkenstein
>>12893931>until frankenstein
Viewtiful Joe Fire Leo
>>12894128My trick for this guy is attacking him using fast forward instead of slow down when he's vulnerable, that way you're already on fire when the fight resets and can just punch him right away, skipping the meteor phase. It makes it soooo much easier.
>>12893929Yeah, collecting coins to use in a slot machine to get gobs of lives doesn't make sense until you reach the castle. Then you suddenly have reason to stockpile lives.>TMNTI know level 2 is the meme, but level 4 is the real jump. If it's your first time through and you aren't using a map, you will most likely get lost or get drained of health on all turtles before you find the exit. And may god help you if you left level 3 without a stockpile of scrolls for all four turtles. Level 4 just happens to be the point where the game starts throwing too many enemies at you to handle with your standard weapon alone, as well as being the last level where you can refill your turtles health reliably if you know where the pizza is.>Wonder Boy in Monster LandThe final level is a degree of bullshit that should never be allowed in games, much less arcade games. The game has a timer constantly ticking, and after so many ticks, you lose health then the counter resets. Normally this isn't an issue, unless you are moving slowly or keep screwing up a jump. The final level is a giant maze that sends you back if you take a wrong turn. Even knowing the right path and taking it perfectly, you'll lose some health before reaching the boss. You can only tell which direction is the correct one if you chose the Bell and not the Ruby for completing the hidden side-quest, and without the Ruby the final boss takes twice as many hits to go down. Oh, and midway through the maze is a part where you need to make perfect jumps from one moving platform to another about 20-30 times in a row, and falling sends you waaaay back. The final boss is also practically impossible to beat with the sword without taking damage, so I hope you've been saving up magic all game long to handle him. Rest of the game is fun, enjoyable, and fair compared to this crap.
>>12888665There's a save point right before him..
>>12888538I was an idiot and really bad at games when I was young. I had no friends to swap tips with either, so when I bought DMC3 I got my ass handed to me by Cerberus and returned it to the store the next day lmaocame back as an adult and beat the game multiple times. now I think it's an all time classic
>>12894902Which is right past the point where you can grind. So if you save there at too low a level, Ultros becomes an RNG fight. Which is precisely what I did on my first playthrough. Lost count of the number of times Ultros decided to double-tap Banon and instant-kill him. Finally lucked through, but in every playthrough since I've spent a little time grinding in the loop to raise Banon's levels a bit before taking on Ultros.>Starcraft:Brood WarThe final Zerg campaign mission is that much harder than every other mission in both the original game and the expansion. Surrounded on three sides by fully built Terran and Protoss enemies, no additional bases available until you take them from the enemy, and all three constantly send battle groups your way. Unless you specifically cheese the AI by making cheap buildings outside your base for them to target while you shoot down their attackers, you'll probably run out of resources before you can field a decent army, if you don't get overrun by the AI before then.>Legend of ZeldaThe 6th dungeon in the original quest, and the 3rd or 4th dungeon in the 2nd quest. 6th dungeon in the original is where you get not only rooms full of Darknuts, but teleporting Wizzrobes as well. 3rd or 4th dungeon in 2nd quest is where you start having to deal with invisible passageways and one-way passages and hidden entrances and all the other assorted BS that 2nd quest loves to throw.>Syphon Filter 3Mission 11, Convoy. Pretty much every level prior to this can be beaten with standard strategy and skills. Go slow, go fast, you'll make it one way or the other. But Convoy, you need to be perfect and know what's going to happen before it happens. Entire level is escorting a convoy of vehicles from point A to point B on a desert road while enemy forces approach from both sides of the road and try to destroy the vehicles. I still don't know how I lucked through.
>>12888131>>12890693I love FF3's final dungeon. To me that's what a final dungeon in an RPG should be. You're not meant to and you're not meant to be able to just waltz in and on your first forray wipe out everything and kick the boss' ass with relative ease. You go in, search around and get a sense of the place then have to retreat back and heal, maybe readjust your party and go again, getting further each time. Personally, 3 is one of my favorites in the whole series. It also has one of the most awesome arranged soundtracks ever. I got it by accident thinking it was for north american FF3 back in the 90's and it blew my mind.
>>12895127>invisible passagewaysOh yeah, that was a thing. Fuck that. Was there a single dungeon like that in the first quest?
>>12895213Walk through walls in dungeons were second quest only. 2Q also had one way walk through walls sections, which if I remember right, made it possible to get stuck in a loop in a later dungeon if you don't have a spare key.
>>12888514The trick is that you can free yourself from the fire shot by mashing buttons. If you mash really fast, you take less damage than the yellow shot. So just jump into the fire shot if you can't dodge them all.
>>12895127>Wizardry 4This game already has a reputation for ball-busting difficulty, what with the constantly being hunted by Trebor's Ghost thing, being unable to level up outside of reaching the next pentagram, hero parties respawning when you change floor or load a save game, etc. But pic related is the bullshit prior to the bullshit that is the Cosmic Cube, and it's a fucking shitshow. You start on the stairs to the left and have to make your way to the stairs to the right. Oh, and you don't get the item to banish Trebor's Ghost until you are inside the Cosmic Cube. What's not pictured here is that many of the spinner spots also have moving walls. So even when you finally face the right direction, you might not know since the opening moved and now there's a wall there. By the time you cast the spell to find which direction you're really facing, you've spun again. Fuck floor 4.>FF7No, not the optional Weapon battles. Most people don't remember, but there's a battle in FF7 that was a wall. Literally, and a wall for players rushing through the game as well. Demon's Gate was capable of doing a lot of damage to the party, and if you weren't geared for healing and dealing with him specifically, or had done some grinding and got some quality gear, then he would wipe your party quickly. Do a quick search, and "How do I beat Demon's Gate?" is one of the most common questions going back years and years and years, because people kept rushing into it. To this day new players keep getting filtered by him.>Dragon Quest 2Cave to Rhone. Game is challenging but fair until you reach the Cave to Rhone. Then it's sleep, insta-kill, and big damage AoE attacks/spells all the way to the end of the game.
>>12892007I have a memory of taking damage then using the invincibility to just sail through him.
>>12895127I wouldn't know about the final Zerg mission, because the one that's a mission or two prior still filters me to this day. I think it's To Slay the Beast or something like that, the one where you face a combined UED Terran and Zerg onslaught, and you're on an island with very limited resources and only one expansion that you have to fight for to obtain. I've never been able to build up enough forces to take the expansion while holding off the combined Terran and Zerg forces thrown my way, let alone ferry my way across the water to the island to take on the main forces and so slay the Overmind.
>>12887996The mid-game airship mission in MM Zero 2. First few stages have some rough moments, but then you get forced into this marathon stage, with timed electrical gates, that part in the middle where you have to keep Ciel from getting damaged, and a boss that - while a relatively easy fight - can still catch you off-guard and throw you to an instant death. It's insane, and it's the only stage you can access when it appears.
>>12896458There's 3 mineral patches and a gas on the elevated ground to the left. As soon as you can get down a few more sunken colonies to handle the first few attacks, get Overlord transporting. The few more minerals and the 2nd gas makes it easy to turbo-charge your Zerglings up to Hive tech with the Adrenal Glands. Build 5 groups of 12 Zerglings, and Attack-Move them to the Terran base in the upper left hand corner. They will take losses, but they are cheap throw-away units anyways, and will wipe the entire base of Terrans. Then you have another nearly full batch of minerals and a 3rd gas. From there wiping out the Zerg base to your east and taking their resources plus the big patch of minerals SE of them will set you up for the rest of the battle.With four gas and four bases worth of minerals, you have enough resources to supplymaxx out on upgraded Mutalisks and just overwhelm the remaining enemies with sheer firepower. I play at one notch below regular speed, and had the first Terran base wiped at the 15 minute mark with Zerglings only.
>>12889953>>12893931>le impossible hallway of epic deathSuch a stupid fucking meme. It's literally impossible for the knights to hurt you if you crouch and whip.*waits for you to tell me about how the medusa pattern is impossible to figure out*
>>12888546>The final boss gets FOURIs that correct? It's been a while since I played the DS version but I recall that they gave her these two sperm creatures as additional enemies, which each had an attack. Once you eliminated those it was back to the standard 2 attacks per turn.Also FF3's turn order RNG was super frustrating. Imagine>turn 1, your healers go before the boss, party is left low>turn 2, your healers go after the boss, party is killedyou just lose without any ability to prevent it
>>12887996Sonic Chaos' final boss. Chaos is infamously absurdly easy but this piece of shit makes the Death Egg Robot look like a joke.
>>12899164If you stay on the far left you'll be fine, he'll hit you with his projectile sometimes, but then your ring will fly up and you'll always catch it, never going to zero rings.
>>12899164Yeah, but then Eggman goes kamikaze on you with his Eggmobile and it's an instant kill (ignoring any rings you're holding) if he hits you before you finish him off.
>>12898647>recently beat Death without using subweaponsI jumped up and a did a faggy little dance, ngl
>>12901282I didn't know there were rings in the level (they're hidden somewhere). Because of this, I got raped for an hour. Just my luck.
I recall having some trouble with pissing on the rock dude in the club in Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Level 8-3 in SMB.
EWJ2 last levelGaregga stage 6Revenge of shinobi last level (though more annoying than hard)Like a million more but im retarded atm
Final Fantasy 1, the Marsh Cave. Prior to that, you have the Temple of Fiends (Which is literally just a few steps forward and you'll run into the boss) and Bikke the pirate. Marsh Cave is the first true dungeon of the game and man is it rough. You've got a lot of enemies that poison (spiders, snakes, and I think an ooze), zombies that can permastun someone, and Wizards who have a chance to cast an instant death spell called rub. The dungeon itself has an immediate split where the north leads to loot while the south leads to the objective, so not only is the path long and winding, there's also multiple routes. And the final floor is one big room with 6x4 smaller rooms in it, one of which has your prize and the boss fight. Then, because you don't have exit yet, you have to walk the crown out manually to get back to the overworld and save.Sure, Earth Cave is technically longer and has zombies too, but by that time you're better equipped to deal with it all. And ice cave has Sorcerers with deathtouch, but they're kind of rare. Marsh is probably the biggest jump in difficulty in the game and everything else is fairly stable in upping the difficulty for it.
>>12897862Just took a 2nd swing at this mission since I didn't have time to finish it on Monday. This time I found a ramp leading to the high ground resources to the west of your starting location, it's SW of where you start. Since I didn't need to spend the 200/200 on early transporting, I was able to build faster and got the Terran base to the north nuked in under 11 minutes.The trick is being prepared for the counter-attack after nuking that base, cause the AI will send Dropships and Overlords loaded with Ultralisks, Siege Tanks, Goliaths, and Hydras over to the destroyed base to try and take it back. After that, 2-3 groups of Zerglings and 2-3 groups of Mutalisks can clear out the remaining Zerg base on your starting island, and free up their resources and the big patch of minerals to the SE. Then there's another counter attack, after which the AI will regularly send over Overlords/Dropships with a few units to harass you.After that it's just a matter of supply-maxxing out on Mutalisks and sending them in to clear out all enemies, then sending an Overlord with some Dark Templar over to kill the Overmind. Cleared in less than an hour, probably could have done it quicker if my first 5 groups of Muta's didn't get mostly wiped out since I wasn't micro-managing them.Much easier compared to Omega, no trickery required to win.
>>12887996Tomb raider 2 -> Tomb raider 3Just compared Great Wall and Jungle. Great wall has some action sequences that demand attention but it's basically clear what the intention of the game is. There's no reason to suspect the end of Jungle is the objective. Lots of new players slide down the big hill and then (metaphorically) bounce off the game. Plus later levels are harder than an anvil.
>>12895127>SF3Convoy basically requires you to stay a few vehicle lengths ahead and react quickly to the radar. It's not easy, but the enemies are mostly basic-tier and you're pretty well armed. Knowing to switch between rifle and 45 based on terrain helps. The Beast is more annoying, where that fucking tank can sometimes one-shot you regardless of the logic.
That crane robot boss in FF7
